Cray Computers Feature in the TOP500 List of Fastest Computers
If you’re in the market for a supercomputer, a Cray computer may be the machine for you. The company makes systems for data storage and analytics, and several Cray systems are included in the TOP500 list of fastest computers. Read on to learn about the Cray-1, Cray J90, and Cray El Capitan.
Cray-1
The Cray-1 computer was one of the first high-performance computer designs. It had twelve pipelined functional units, each with a 24-bit address arithmetic unit. This scalar portion of the machine was composed of add, subtract, multiply, and shift units. Each of these units contained 200,000 gates.
The Cray-1 computer has a large number of registers between its CPU units and memory. These registers act as cache memory. In addition to this, the Cray-1 has vector registers, which are implemented in static memory. The main memory has an access time of 50 nanoseconds, while the registers have six nanoseconds. The Cray-1 also has sixty-three auxiliary address registers, which serve as backups.
The Cray-1 computer first hit the market in 1976. It was the fastest supercomputer of its time. It was developed by Seymour Cray, who founded the Cray Computer Company in 1975. The first Cray-1 computer system was installed at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in 1976, and it was rated as the world’s fastest supercomputer for the period from 1976 to 1982.
The Cray-1 computer system was the first supercomputer to implement vector instructions. This method improved the efficiency of math operations by arranging memory to allow for single operations on large data. This made the Cray-1 the first machine to meet the ERDA Class VI requirement for high-performance computing. It was capable of performing 20 to sixty million floating point operations per second. It was also the first computer to implement vector chaining in its processor.
Cray Research had developed the Cray-1 computer for four years. The Cray-1 was so popular that there was a bidding war to get it. The winning bidder received the serial number 001. The system cost eight million dollars and was shipped to the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in 1977. The NCAR used the machine for six months before decommissioning it in 1989.
The Cray-1 computer is a 64-bit system that was designed to run large data sets. Unlike previous Cray designs, this machine had a dedicated I/O unit. Each of its sixteen channels were 16 bits wide with a 50-ns cycle time. In smaller configurations, the main memory could be as low as 0.25 megawords.
Cray J90
The Cray J90 computer is an air-cooled vector supercomputer that is powered by eight vector processors. The computer runs Cray’s proprietary Unix operating system. It is also equipped with an IO subsystem consisting of a VME system and a SPARC CPU board. The front-end processor is a Sun Sparcstation-5 workstation that runs Solaris. The machine is donated to the RCS by Brown University, where it is used by the physics department.
The Cray Unicos system ran Cray’s UNICOS operating system. It supported the Fortran 77 and C compilers. It also included mathematical and statistical software and vendor-supplied utilities. The system could support batch jobs that require between ten and twelve eight megawords of memory. However, it was not suited for interactive jobs.
The Cray T90 systems are built with ECL logic, which reduces the clock cycle and produces higher precision results. These computers also have a large cache and support SMP scalability. Cray J90 computers also have a scalar processor. A scalar processor has a separate memory, which enables faster calculations for scalar data.
Parallel processors were another major feature of Cray machines. The processors were designed for efficiency and ease of use. They automatically detected and optimised parallelism and provided high-speed numerical libraries. Moreover, the Unicos operating system provided powerful big system facilities with a familiar interface. It also provided mainframe-class resource control and security features.
Cray’s supercomputer is still a leading example of high-performance computing. Its emergence in the field of scientific computing was marked by its technological advancement. Although Cray computers were expensive, they were reliable and widely used. Nowadays, they are still used by scientists to solve difficult computational problems.
The Cray J90 computer has 32 processors. This computer is also equipped with an IO subsystem based on VME. The J90 also features Cray Unicos operating system. This operating system provides a wide range of options for parallel code generation. It is also supported by Message Passing Toolkit libraries.
The Cray T90 computer enables users to run models with 1.5 million degrees of freedom and 1000+ modes. It also includes 50 GB of disk and 4 GB/s of memory bandwidth. It is a powerful system, and can last up to 3.5 hours.
Cray El Capitan
El Capitan is a new high-performance computing system from Cray. The machine boasts advanced modeling, simulation, and artificial intelligence capabilities. It is based on Cray’s Shasta architecture. Its performance is projected to be fifty times faster than the current Sequoia system, which is the world’s second-most powerful supercomputer. It will also be ten times faster than the Sierra system, which is the current world’s largest supercomputer. The machine is slated to enter production sometime in 2023 and will be fully operational by 2030.
The new supercomputer will be seven times faster than the world’s fastest supercomputer and be nearly seven times faster than the top 100 systems in the world, according to Cray CEO Peter Ungaro. The new machine is aimed at helping scientists develop advanced artificial intelligence and modeling capabilities. It will be capable of performing 1.5 quintillion calculations per second. It is expected to be used for modeling purposes and to simulate the human brain.
El Capitan will be installed at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in early 2023. The National Nuclear Security Administration will use the machine for ongoing modeling of nuclear weapons. It is the third exascale supercomputer to be installed at LLNL. The DOE has already announced plans to purchase two other systems built on the Shasta architecture.
Cray is one of the leading players in supercomputing and currently runs three of the top ten supercomputers in the world. Cray recently announced a new $600 million contract for the El Capitan supercomputer. The system is expected to run national nuclear security applications and be 50 times faster than the Sequoia system. Its peak performance will be 1.5 exaflops, or one quintillion calculations per second. It is expected to be fully functional by the end of 2023.
The Cray El Capitan will be used to perform research for the National Nuclear Security Administration. It will be delivered to the agency in late 2022. It will be located at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California. The supercomputer will help the government ensure the security, effectiveness, and safety of its nuclear stockpile.
Cray XT3
The Cray XT3 computer will be used to analyze synthetic images captured by sensors on UAVs. These images can help researchers evaluate both low and high temperatures. Using these images, Joshua Fairley and his team will develop new algorithms for the Cray XT3 computer. This system will be used in the fight against insurgents on two fronts.
The Cray XT3 computer is one of the most powerful supercomputers on the TeraGrid. It is a distributed memory massively parallel supercomputer designed by Cray Inc. in collaboration with Sandia National Laboratories. It was initially code-named Red Storm, and Cray released it to the public in 2004. It is based on the Intel ASCI Red supercomputer and previous Cray T3E systems.
Another use for the XT3 computer is in quantum and molecular mechanics simulation. It can sustain eight teraflops of computation on a single cluster of 2,048 processors. This is 82 percent of the theoretical peak. This is enough power to perform the ab initio quantum calculation of an iron nanoparticle with 4,400 atoms, a size that has never been modeled at the quantum level.
The Cray XT3 computer also supports MPICH2. The next release of MPICH2 will support MPICH2 on a Cray XT3 computer. The National Laboratory has also endorsed this supercomputer. The MPICH-MX will support MPICH2 in the future.
